


Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Howls

by AlterEgon



Series: Winds of Change [4]
Category: Blood Books - Tanya Huff, Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Selkies, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: Charlie had promised Maia to get her into contact with her friend Dr. Malan - the Selkie with a degree in marine biology.Maia finds that she rather likes work with her unusual temporary boss and her two pets - or guests - the huge wolf dogs Cloud and Storm.When two more friends of Dr. Malan's appear, some things start to get a little confusing, and Maia ends up learning about more than just marine biology.





	Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Howls

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for the awkward summary - my usual summary-writer is currently exceedingly busy.
> 
> Thanks, as always, goes to my wonderful team of beta readers and cheerleaders!

"Dr. Malan – Maia Roberts."

Maia felt the woman's scrutiny rest heavily on her as Charlie stepped back to give them a moment to become acquainted. Dr. Malan was a friend of Charlie's who was a marine biologist and had agreed to give Maia some hands-on experience in the area she had chosen for her studies.

She was a tall woman, with a beauty that was not entirely of this world. Maia found herself reminded slightly of the Seelie Queen – beautiful but dangerous.

Even dressed in work boots, canvas trousers and a heavy felt coat, Dr. Malan looked striking, but there was no doubt that this woman also was a predator. The werewolf part in Maia reacted to it, leaving her uncertain of where, exactly, they stood where the position of hunter and prey was concerned.

Professionally, at least, their positions were clear. As an intern, Maia would do whatever work she was assigned without complaint. It was probably the best if she considered Dr. Malan as the alpha in their non-existent pack of two for the moment.

The sharper senses that remained with her even in human form made it impossible for her to miss that the older woman wore the scent of the sea as if it was part of her. That smell, slightly salty, a bit tangy, with the barest hint of fish and wet fur, was as much part of the woman as her dark hair and almond-shaped eyes.

Like Maia, Dr. Malan was not all human.

Technically, she was far less so even. According to Charlie's information, Dr. Malan was a Selkie – a shape-shifter as much at home in the body of a seal as that of a woman.

She held out a hand to Maia, who took it. Her grip was firm, callused from work with the ropes on her boat.

"Any friend of Charlie's is a friend of mine," Dr. Malan said. "I'm happy to have you with me in this project."

"I'm happy to be here," Maia assured her. Being a werewolf made some things more complicated than they were for most people. She had the change under control almost all of the time, but a small risk remained, especially when under high degrees of stress. She hoped it would never come to that, but working with someone who knew there was more in the world than the naked eye could see was going to help.

"I'm mostly doing independent work," Dr. Malan continued. "So it'll be you and me, and we'll have to do pretty much everything on our own. I hope you don't mind some heavy lifting."

"I'm stronger than I look," Maia told her. "And I'll do whatever is needed."

"Come along then," the Selkie told her, before turning to Charlie. "Will you stay for dinner?"

Charlie shook her head. "I need to be at a band practice. Feel free to call me if you need me, though."

Dr. Malan's face took on an expression of amused surprise. "What? No request to toss your phone in the sea for you this time?"

Charlie adjusted her guitar with a grin. "Can't. Not while our friends are staying in that snake pit of a country and might be in need of instant rescue. But I appreciate the offer."

"I did not actually offer," Dr. Malan noted, just as Charlie played a few notes and turned, vanishing into the shrubbery with the barely audible sound of air filling a woman-shaped space suddenly vacated.

Maia found herself looking at the spot from which Charlie had just disappeared, feeling a little abandoned. She didn't know Charlotte Gale all that well, but now she was alone with her only company someone she had met all of five minutes ago – the first time there was no familiar, supportive person around since the day Luke had brought her into the pack.

Dr. Malan looked her over once again, smiling without showing teeth. A predator's smile. "Let's get you settled," she suggested.

*

They walked towards a building on the cliffs overlooking the sea, too large to be called a cottage.

"We have an apartment in town," Dr. Malan told Maia. "But I like it out here when I don't have to be there. It's nice and quiet, and with good access to the water."

"We?" Maia asked, confused. Charlie had not mentioned anyone else.

"My fisherman and me," the Selkie told her. "Except that the fish he reels in are not the scaly, wet kind. He's in marketing." She laughed when that did nothing to clear up the young woman's confusion. "We're traditional creatures. To live a land-life, we need a husband. A human husband. We've just loosened the requirements of who is or isn't eligible a little."

"Oh." Maia wondered if she should have spent some time reading up on Selkies before coming. She hadn't given the woman's species a lot of thought. Working at the Hunter's Moon, she usually took any kind of Seelie or other Downworlder in stride. Why, they even had raw fish on the menu in case a Selkie did wander in, though that had never happened on her shift yet.

Dr. Malan slid into the next topic smoothly, as if it was the most natural turn for the conversation to take. "So, is there anything I should know about your little extra skill?"

Now that was a new way to put her status as a werewolf. Maia made a face. "It's more a condition than a skill, really," she admitted. "And I don't turn into a raging monster under the full moon, if that's what you mean."

"That's not what I meant," Dr. Malan said. "See, I, for example, like to eat fish, don't insist on having it cooked first, and may be found walking into or out of the water naked, so if you prefer not to witness that, I suggest you avert your eyes."

"Chocolate makes me sick and I really prefer to have my food cooked," Maia told her. "I don’t think changing would help any with whatever work you have for me, but since I brought a limited number of clothes, I need enough warning to undress if you need me to. What is _that_?"

She stopped in her tracks at the sight of two large shapes walking around the corner of the building, one red, one white. If the wind had blown the other direction, or if she hadn't been walking so close to a large predator already, she should have been alerted by the smell before now.

"Cloud and Storm," Dr. Malan said, pointing first at the white creature, then the red one.

Maia watched in fascination as they loped over to them with matching dog-grins on their furry faces.

They were the largest canines Maia had ever seen outside of werewolves. Their body shapes suggested that they had a good amount of wolf-blood in them as well, though their size and the way they behaved around the two women spoke a different language. Their coats were fine and glossy, clearly receiving regular attention with a brush. She settled on very large shepherd dogs with recent wolf ancestry, just as the red nose was thrust into her hand, demanding a scratch. "I didn't know you had dogs!"

"They're not strictly speaking my dogs," the Selkie told her. She was scratching the white dog's ears. "They're more like … companions who have come to stay with us for a little while. They only belong to themselves."

Maia frowned. She could have sworn Storm had uttered a sound that did not express agreement.

*

"This is my sealskin," Dr. Malan said as she unwrapped the scarf she'd had around her neck. "Do not try to steal it. Do not remove it when you see it anywhere. Do not hide it. You're not likely to survive the experience. Best to not even touch it."

Maia stared at the small garment. "Seriously?" she asked.

"Sealskins are no joking matter for us," the Selkie told her. "We need them to change shape. It's—"

"No," Maia interrupted. "I know all of that. It's just… I thought it would be larger."

Now the older woman laughed. "Oh, it can be." Tossing the scarf into the air, she watched it unfurl before catching a much larger piece of thick cloth.

Not cloth, Maia realized, but a pelt. A full seal pelt. She shuddered involuntarily as Dr. Malan held it up, showing her the face with empty holes where the eyes would be.

"Better?"

"I think I preferred it the other way," Maia admitted, causing another chuckle. "It looks like it should be heavier than that."

Dr. Malan was handling the larger pelt as if it was still nothing more than a thin, narrow scarf.

"Oh, it is," she said, holding it out to Maia. "Unless one of us is handling it, it is very heavy."

Maia didn't even reach out for it. "You just told me not to touch it," she said. "I know how to obey an order."

There was surprise in the Selkie's dark eyes. "I give you permission to touch it now and to try its weight," she said. "Are you always this obedient?"

Maia reached out, marveling at the fine texture of the pelt, and finding that the sealskin was too heavy for her to lift from Dr. Malan's grip with one hand.

As soon as she had given it to other woman, the pelt was tossed up again. Even though she watched out for it, Maia couldn't tell when exactly the change from pelt to scarf happened.

"When the alpha of your pack gives you an order, you either obey or you challenge him – or her," Maia said. "You don't discuss or tell yourself they didn't mean _now_."

"I shall keep that in mind," Dr. Malan said as she draped the scarf around her shoulders loosely again. "Did Charlie Gale tell you how she met my family?"

"She mentioned something about banishing a Sea Serpent back into the Seelie—The UnderRealm," Maia said, quickly adjusting her terminology to the one the Gales used.

"That was how she met me, in person." The Selkie crossed the room towards a door to a narrow hallway that ran the length of the ground floor, followed closely by both Cloud and Storm. "Come. Let's make dinner, and I'll tell you about the time her great-aunt Catherine stole some of our younger girls' pelts a few years ago."

*

While Maia had been on boats before, she'd never been expected to handle one.

The small boat Dr. Malan used for her work at sea didn't have a crew. It was small enough to be operated by a single person, and the Selkie made it the first order of business to teach Maia how the vessel worked. While not exactly part of marine biology, it certainly was a skillset that would come in handy in that area. It made for interesting learning and kept her busy – almost busy enough to not notice the looks the two dogs gave her from where they were sitting on the dock.

"I feel as if they disapprove of me," Maia noted with a glance at the two large canines. They were sitting side by side, tongues lolling slightly, their eyes following every move she made as the two women went through the equipment once again, Maia reiterating everything she had just been taught.

Dr. Malan laughed. "They probably do," she admitted. "You're playing with a boat when you could just as well be petting them or throwing another frisbee."

"Later," Maia promised the two. "I have to work now. People work, you know?"

The canine grins seemed to widen a little at the prospect.

"See?" Dr. Malan said. "They think you shouldn't be on the water with me, but out there running with them."

"There's no way I can keep up with them when they start to run," Maia told her. "I don't think I've ever seen dogs that huge before. What kind of breed are they anyway?"

The older woman shrugged. "I don't know anything about dog breeding. You could run with them in your other shape, you know…"

Maia shook her head immediately. "I'm not a dog! And the wolf isn't something fun to play with – it's... we're controlling it. We're keeping the change from happening where we can. We're human, not some animals."

Dr. Malan looked at her, eyebrows raised over eyes that suddenly looked dark rim to rim. "I put on my sealskin and enjoy a dive into the waves. Does that make me an animal in your eyes?"

Embarrassed, Maia studied the tips of her boots. "That's different. You're…" Seelie. Fey. Selkie. Not human. Inhuman. The words rushed through her mind faster and faster. Less than human? No. Different, but surely no less.

"You're different," she said firmly. "You were born this way. You're supposed to be this way. I'm not."

Dr. Malan shrugged. "Suit yourself," she said. "Seems to me that you're just making it needlessly hard on yourself, though. Do you remember what I told you about having some of our skins stolen?"

She did. For a Selkie, it was disaster to be robbed of one of her shapes. Losing the ability to transform, to dance with the waves in seal shape, to live with those marine predators… She'd been shocked when Dr. Malan had told her that they mated with the seals as well as they did with humans, not discriminating or preferring one species to the other. Land lives, sea lives. They both had their place in a Selkie's biography.

She wasn't like that. Even if she hadn't had Simon, she couldn't have ever imagined being a wolf among wolves – or a wolf among dogs, as the case might be.

There was a whine from the docks. Glancing over, she saw that Cloud and Storm had come closer to the boat, staring at her with eyes that shone with an almost human intelligence.

Great. Now she was imagining things.

"Later!" She told them, turning back towards the boat and its machines.

*

Maia found that she loved being out on the ocean with Dr. Malan. Her main work currently was on the communication of harbor seals, which would have been perfectly fine for Maia as a study focus went. The Selkie seemed determined to show her as much of her potential work areas as she could, however.

Dr. Malan asked questions relentlessly and never tired of answering Maia's in return.

Some days, one of the dogs rode in the boat with them. Some days, they were both conspicuously absent when the two women left the house.

"They might be hunting small animals or something," Maia pointed out one morning. "Shouldn't we be keeping them inside?"

"I expect they are," came the answer. "And why shouldn't they? They probably like the taste, and they know better than to take pets."

Maia didn't see how they could know that, but she had learned that for all the knowledge Dr. Malan had about the animals living in the sea, there was absolutely no disabusing her of any of the strange notions she had about the two dogs. Listening to her, one almost had to be surprised they didn't suddenly grow a pair of hands and help out on the boat.

They certainly considered Maia their personal groomer, dropping a brush in her lap as soon as she sat down in the evening. It wasn't hard to see how their coats had gotten that shiny: they were both immensely insistent when it came to having their fur brushed.

Still, there was something uncanny about the two. She'd woken more than once with one of the large animals draped across the foot end of her bed, even if she was sure that the door had been closed and no dog inside when she'd crawled in.

She'd broached the subject to Dr. Malan once, and she'd only shrugged. "They're large enough to reach a door handle if they want to."

That may have been true, but Maia had never seen them do that particular trick at any time during the day.

In spite of all their apparent intelligence and Dr. Malan's unwavering confidence in their abilities to stay out of trouble, it was unmistakable to the careful observer that at least one of them had encountered some of the dangers that lurked for free-roaming dogs first-hand: one of Storm's rear paws sported a ring of discolored hair: a ragged scar that looked like it came from a wolf trap.

Though it had left him with a slight limp, evident mostly when he was chasing a Frisbee at full speed, at least it didn't seem more than a minor inconvenience for him.

Today, Cloud was riding with them on the boat. She was curled up in the entrance to the cabin, sheltering from the fresh breeze that blew across the deck.

"Let's take a detour past the seal banks," Dr. Malan decided when they wrapped up their work for the day with some time to spare. "I expect there'll be something we're supposed to take back to shore."

Selkies, as Maia had learned, knew exactly where in their waters sunk vessels were waiting for someone to retrieve whatever treasures were hidden in them. They used that, collecting antiques and coins to sell them strategically and invest the proceeds. Since they didn't, strictly speaking, need the Woods Hole Institution boat Dr. Malan used to take their treasures ashore, Maia suspected that the main reason for their visit was making sure that she didn't forget that Dr. Malan was only human part-time.

Telling real seals from Selkies in seal-shape was harder even than telling humans from Selkies in human shape. Though Maia tried to tell which of the forms lazing on the sand banks belonged to which group, she had to admit to herself soon enough that she was only guessing randomly.

By now, Dr. Malan had no qualms about leaving her in charge of the boat alone, and Maia barely felt nervous anymore when her boss stripped to her skin and twirled her scarf around herself while already vaulting over board, settling into her other shape while in the air and hitting the water as a seal.

Cloud chose that moment to pad across the deck, peering over the railing and into the water to yip at the grey nose that surfaced, surrounded by several others of her species.

"Well, Cloud?" Maia said, scratching the white head, "What do you think they'll bring for us to take home?"

The dog didn't answer, except by moving her head so Maia could focus on her ears.

"If I ever find out who spoiled you so, I'll have to have a firm word with them," Maia declared, though she obliged.

The sound Cloud made almost sounded like a giggle.

It wasn't a very long wait before the seals re-appeared, towing several objects. Maia didn't need to speak Seal to understand that she was supposed to hoist them on board, which required disentangling herself from the dog first.

"We really shouldn't be taking you along if you keep getting underfoot," she muttered as Cloud, curious to see what the new game was, came trotting along with her.

Pulling the treasure aboard was work. A bag of coins was followed by another, heavy to the point where Maia found herself wondering if it contained rocks.

Peering inside, she determined that wasn't too far off. Someone had collected a number of detailed sculptures of various types of colored stone in it. The smallest was about the size of her thumb. The largest, wrapped in a square of sodden canvas, was almost as long as her forearm.

She amused herself with setting them up on deck in one row as she waited to see if there would be more.

Cloud had stretched out by her side again, making sure to keep her head within reach so Maia could spare her a scratch every now and then.

For a moment, the young woman wondered if maybe she should try that trick with Simon at some point. What if having one's fur scratched really _was_ as heavenly as the dog made it out to be? She blushed at her own thoughts and put them firmly out of her mind. What was she thinking?

The only defense she could find was that the Selkie's attitude had to be rubbing off.

"Maia!" Dr. Malan's voice sounded from the water, as if called by her musings.

Hurrying to check what had prompted her to take off her seal skin while still in the sea, Maia found that the Selkie was using her hands to help maneuver a box through the water and start to raise it up.

Maia leaned down to receive it.

"What is this?" It looked like carved wood, preserved to a point that should have been impossible for an object that had spent time at the bottom of the sea.

"Something that should probably go to Charlie Gale's cousin," Dr. Malan said. "There's a good bit of magic on this, and no opening mechanism we can discern."

It took some trying before she could get a good grip on the box, and more wrangling until it was securely on deck. Dr. Malan came climbing up after it.

"You're bleeding," she commented, pointing at a line of red welling up from Maia's arm where her sleeve was rolled back.

Maia looked at the wound. "Huh. I didn't notice that. It doesn’t even hurt." It seemed odd. She knew of injuries that only made themselves felt when one saw them, but even as she was staring at it, this one didn't ache in the least.

"Sorry," her boss said. "I should have warned you. Some of the ornaments on that box are pretty sharp." She pointed where a matching trace of red clung to the material.

"I thought that was wood," Maia noted, wiping at her arm.

"Looks like it, but I don't think it is," Dr. Malan climbed back into her work clothes, not even bothering to dry off first. "Wash it out with sea water and let it bleed a little before you wrap it."

Maia nodded. A moment later, she had to push aside Cloud's soft nose. "No. We're people. We don't lick our wounds," she told the dog.

*

They were almost back to shore when it finally started to hurt, and the pain seemed to try to make up for lost time by gaining in intensity quickly.

Though she did her best not to show it – it was silly, the wound wasn't deep or large – , Maia found Dr. Malan watching her as they unloaded the equipment they couldn't leave on the boat over night.

Cloud wasn't moving from her side now, her soft nose continually trying to get near the bandage she had covered the cut with, and seemingly determined to butt into whatever other parts of Maia she could reach when that wasn't an option.

"Let me have a look at your arm again," Dr. Malan ordered her as soon as they were back in the house and out of their coats.

"It's nothing," Maia tried. "Just stinging a bit."

"Stinging a bit after hurting yourself on what may be an artifact isn’t nothing," Dr. Malan said practically. "Let's see it."

There wasn't much Maia could say to object to that.

She sat down where her boss directed, and started undoing the bandage one-handed. Feeling the heat radiating from her arm underneath made it hard to continue to insist that there wasn't anything to worry about.

Seeing the way the cut, which had looked as if it had just scored the skin far enough to draw blood, had turned an angry dark red by now, the tissue around it swollen already, drove any thought that she was being silly or the Selkie was ridiculously concerned out of her mind.

"This looks like you need a doctor," Dr. Malan noted, studying the area of the wound.

"No." It looked bad, but it wasn't anywhere near bad enough to make her willing to expose herself to a human doctor. "You know what I am. I can't see a doctor. If someone examines my blood – and if only to see what got into that cut—"

She didn't have to continue.

Dr. Malan shook her head slightly. "I know what you mean, but we can't leave it like this. I don't have experience with werewolves, Maia. Selkies don't usually get infections, and all the medical knowledge I have refers to seals and the like."

Maia considered for a moment. She had a little experience cleaning up wounds – werewolves had plenty of ways to get themselves scratched up, and fighting for position in the pack was only one of them. "Do you have a first-aid kit somewhere? I'll just wash this out with some disinfectant – or if we don't have any, alcohol will do. I'll be fine." She forced more confidence into her voice than she felt. "Really."

The Selkie didn't seem convinced, but she relented. By the time she had found what Maia had requested, the younger woman was heartily tired of having to shove both Cloud and Storm out of the way.

"Can you take these two out of the room?" she asked. "Please. They keep trying to lick me."

"Do you think they consider you part of their pack?" Dr. Malan asked, curiosity in her voice as she pointed at the dogs, then the open door.

To Maia's surprise, both of them obeyed.

"I don't know," Maia said. "Maybe. I haven't had a lot to do with dogs, so to be honest, I don't know what's normal and what isn't. Maybe they do smell the wolf on me." She could smell the seal on Dr. Malan in her human shape, so it was only a logical conclusion. "But I'm still not a dog. Or a wolf."

*

The disinfectant stung, but that seemed to be all it did. By the time she retired into her room to go to bed, Maia could feel the heat through the bandage. She saw Dr. Malan's concerned look as she said good night, and she couldn't fault her. She could only hope that sleeping would help her body fight whatever had been on the box, and was now in her blood.

She didn't think that what was wrong with her arm really was anything that could be called an infection. It had happened and progressed much too fast for that. At this point, her bets would have been on poison.

Sitting on her bed, she realized that she hadn't even considered the most logical solution to the issue. Groaning at her own slowness, she pulled out her phone and tapped through the screens until she had Charlie's number. She couldn't see a regular doctor about her arm, but the Gales had plenty of people experienced with potions and poisons. She should have called them right away.

A wave of dizziness hit her just as she was about to push the dial button, causing her to miss.

"Idiot," she hissed to herself as she dropped the phone into her lap to steady herself on the bed.

She couldn't pass out now. Not with the solution to her issue so close—

*

Voices penetrated disjointed dreams. Maia blinked, light stinging painfully in her eyes. It took her a few moments until she realized where she was. That brought up more questions. Why was she on a bed in such an awkward position? Her head was hurting. Her arm was burning as if on fire. She felt every heartbeat resonate painfully in her veins.

Oh… right.

The box. The cut. The poison.

She had been going to do something… She tried to remember, tried to think of what she needed to do before she could sleep.

Someone was talking to her, and it wasn't Dr. Malan.

Blurry shapes swam into a semblance of focus. Her boss was standing by the open door to her room, looking concerned.

No. She wasn't the one who was doing the talking.

That was another woman, perched on the side of Maia's bed, white-haired, staring down at her. Her words made no sense even after they penetrated the haze of poison-caused fever.

"You need to change."

Change. Right. She shouldn't be sleeping in her clothes. She shouldn't—

She felt her hold on the waking world slip, only to be brought back by a hard grip on her upper arms. "Maia. _Change._ "

It was an order that penetrated into the same layer of her mind that responded to a direct instruction from her pack leader. The uninjured arm started to grope around, looking for her pajamas. Change…

The woman's hands on her shifted, cupping her face as she leaned down until her eyes looked right into Maia's. "Stupid Puppy." It came out as a growl, a sound more feral than any human throat should have produced. "Change _now._ "

It felt as if a vise was placed around her very thoughts, the power of the other woman's mind forcing her to slip into that part of herself that she kept locked away so tightly, so securely.

She felt her joints crack, bones morphing into a different shape, flesh rearranging itself around them as her skin broke open to release the dense, coarse fur of a wolf. She fought the change with all she had left. She couldn't change like _that_ now. Not while she was barely conscious. What if she couldn’t control her actions? What if she hurt someone?

There was a stranger sitting on her bed, and she was going to hurt her, and possibly turn her, and –

At the last instant, Maia realized that the woman was stark naked, and some shred of reasonable thought used that information to calm her.

 _You're dreaming_. _Or maybe you're hallucinating, but there's certainly not a naked woman sitting on your bed and forcing you into wolf shape._

But the woman was still there, and she could feel the hands in her fur as she gave a canine whimper. Had the pain grown less from the change? Was it imagination? Was it because her wolf body felt differently from her human one?

Something nipped at her paws, and as she twitched away, she spotted Storm, who had sat on the floor by the bed. He had his front paws on the edge of the bed now, his expression far from the happy, carefree doggy smile she'd seen on him before. He saw her as a wolf, and he didn't want her to be like that. Without words passing between them, she understood what he wanted as his muzzle darted in again, sharp teeth touching her skin without biting.

Change…

*

Maia woke to sun streaming through her window.

The fever and pain were gone, and she felt surprisingly clear-headed, given the confused dreams she remembered. Had she really managed to sleep off the poison like that?

Someone had been in the room, she realized quickly. She was naked under the covers. Had someone undressed her? Had she actually _changed_ while dreaming, tearing the clothes she'd passed out in? If so, someone had taken the shredded remnants away.

Her arm barely hurt anymore, which was as much a relief as finding herself able to think again.

Next time, she reminded herself, call Charlie immediately.

Better yet: Next time, don't hurt yourself on an unknown artifact.

She found her clothes, neatly folded, on the desk chair. While embarrassed at the thought that someone – probably her boss – had undressed her to get her more comfortably into bed, she was glad to see hard evidence that she had not, in fact, changed into a wolf a couple of times that last night.

Her ears, more acute than a normal human's would have been, picked up voices through the closed door. It appeared that Dr. Malan had company.

Well – she should probably get dressed and make sure her boss knew she was alright.

Neither of the dogs was lying in wait outside her door. That would have been less strange if she had found them in the kitchen or by the table, having breakfast of their own. They weren't there either, though.

Instead, she found only Dr. Malan, sharing breakfast with two strangers. They were a man and a woman, their facial features clearly marking them as related. They were older than Dr. Malan looked – probably not older than Dr. Malan _was_. At first glance, Maia estimated the man at roughly Luke's age, his hair a fine but thick mane of red that showed no grey yet, and the woman, white-haired, somewhat older.

As she turned to smile at Maia, she reconsidered. Her face looked no older than his, and a second look corrected the initial impression: her hair was not white at all, but a very light blonde, cut in the same style as her companion's.

Maia found herself reminded of the woman in her dream.

"Good to see you're alright," Dr. Malan said, pouring a fourth cup of coffee. "Please – meet Rose and Peter Heerkens. They're friends."

Their hands, as she shook them, were strangely short-fingered and callused, once again reminding her of the night before. She frowned at Rose.

"Were you in my room tonight?" The words were out before she could stop herself.

It was almost a relief when she received a nod in response.

"Your cut needed attention."

"Thank you. Whatever you did, it worked." There were other questions she wanted to ask, but couldn't. Were you naked? Did you make me change shape?

Logically, Maia knew, what had likely happened was that she had, on some level of her awareness, realized the woman's presence and merged it into her fever dreams. That she was sitting there so calmly should have been proof enough that she had not, in fact, changed into a wolf for real. Then again, if they were Dr. Malan's friends, it was entirely possible that they took people changing into animals in stride.

"It's a traditional remedy," Peter spoke up. "Cleans out anything."

*

"Where did Storm and Cloud get to?" Maia asked, looking around as the three women walked down to the beach. Peter had opted out of coming with them, declaring that he had some things to take care of and promising to join them later.

Dr. Malan had declared that they were going to stay ashore today, rather than bore their guests with an excursion to study sea life, or leave them behind on their own while they were out with the boat.

Maia wasn't sure if part of the reason for her decision was to keep an eye on her to make sure any ill effects of the poison actually were gone, but at least her reasoning had sounded sensible.

She gestured vaguely now. "Somewhere around surely. I sent them outside when they were bothering you last night."

There had been a few nights already that the two dogs hadn't spent in the house, so Maia didn't think there was any acute need to worry, but she did feel a small pang of regret at having been the reason for their exile.

Noticing it in her expression, Rose laughed. "Storm is probably off chasing rabbits somewhere. If you let him see that look on your face when he shows up, there'll be no end to the scratches he'll demand from you."

"I see you've met Storm before," Maia commented.

That sent both the other women into a bout of laughter.

"The day we were born," Rose told her after a moment.

Maia shook her head. That couldn't be right. Surely, she must have misheard. The day _they_ were born – that made more sense.

"They're yours, then?" she guessed."Dr. Malan insisted they had no formal owners."

"They don't," Rose confirmed. "And there comes Storm."

There came Storm indeed, racing out of the trees in his slightly uneven gait, a Frisbee firmly between his teeth. He ran up to Rose, shoving the toy into her hands, before turning towards Maia and pressing himself against her legs.

She dug her fingers into the russet coat, giving him a vigorous scratching. "You certainly look no worse for having spent the night outside," she noted. "Who brushed you? _Did_ you spend the night outside?" Suddenly, she had an image in her head of Storm and Cloud walking up to some other building, scratching at the door until they were let in and treated to a feast and a thorough grooming.

"Where did you leave Cloud?"

Storm looked up at her with a canine grin, then turned towards Rose expectantly.

"Oh, you," she said, just before she sent the frisbee off with more power than Maia could have managed.

The dog took off after it at breakneck speed.

"What happened with his paw?" Maia asked. Dr. Malan had only shrugged when she'd pointed out the old injury, citing it as indication that letting the dogs run as freely as she did might not be wise. The Selkie had insisted that he'd had that mark for as long as she'd known him.

"Steel trap," Rose said. "Some idiot tried to catch him for his pelt. He wasn't much more than a cub at the time. He almost died that day." She shuddered, the memory clearly still distressing. "It was touch and go for a while."

Maia found it even harder to understand why they let the dogs roam so carelessly if the thought of that still affected her so much. She looked around again for Cloud. Should they have been looking for her? It was odd – Rose was shaken by the memory, but not at all perturbed by the absence of the white dog.

"What about Cloud?" Maia asked.

"Cloud knew better than to race off on her own with no backup and without letting anyone know where she was going," Rose said.

"Huh?" It took her a moment to realize that she was still talking about the time Storm had been trapped. "Oh. I meant right now. She's not here."

Rose shrugged. "She's fine. Trust me – I'd know if she wasn't."

For some reason, that made Dr. Malan bark a laugh that was more seal than human.

*

They didn't see Cloud again until that night, and she came in only a good time after Rose and Peter had excused themselves – as Maia assumed in order to take care of whatever business had brought them to the coast to begin with. They hadn't volunteered the information, and she hadn't asked.

It seemed that they were going to continue the arrangement of leaving the dogs with Dr. Malan, however. Both were running down to the boat with them the next morning, though both opted to stay back for the day.

That night, they returned to the house to find Peter flipping sausages on the stove for dinner, with Cloud curled up comfortably on the sofa, but jumping down to greet them enthusiastically.

Rose and Storm were nowhere to be seen.

Maia thought she was beginning to understand: If Cloud was actually Peter's dog and Storm Rose's, that certainly explained a few things.

"I arranged to have your artifact collected," Peter told Dr. Malan when they sat down for the meal together.

"Good," the Selkie replied. She showed a lot less enthusiasm for the meat than she usually did for the fish she prepared herself.

Maia, on the other hand, quite welcomed the change.

They were almost done when Rose walked in through the open door to the corridor. That brought a frown to Maia's face. She was sure the front door hadn't opened. Surely if Rose had been in the house all the time, Peter should have called her when they had first sat down.

Maybe there was some kind of agreement between them, since she didn't seem to take offense, but merely accepted the plate he pushed at her.

"Now look at that," Maia muttered. "Cloud didn't even come over to steal a scratch from—" She broke off, realizing that the white dog was no longer where she had sat before.

*

The sun was barely up when Maia woke, once again finding Cloud draped over the foot end of her bed, her nose covered by her bushy tail.

As usual, the door was tightly closed.

"Which of those two taught you to open and close doors, eh?" Maia asked with a sigh.

Deciding that it was too late to go back to sleep, she rolled out of bed and dressed before making her way into the kitchen as silently as she could, trying to make sure she wasn't going to wake anyone. She could get breakfast started for a change.

To her surprise, she found that she was not the first one up.

Peter stood in front of the open fridge, muttering to himself. He was dressed in shorts and nothing else.

"Looking for something?" Maia asked.

He turned, not seeming the least bit surprised to see her there. That was too bad. She had half-hoped to at least startle him a little. It seemed that either his hearing was exceptionally good, her own trust in her ability to move near-noiselessly slightly misplaced, or he was just very, very good at covering up his reactions.

"Milk would have been nice," he said. "But it seems someone drank it all." His disapproving look seemed directed at Cloud, who had come in just behind Maia.

Maia raised an eyebrow at the man. It wasn't like Cloud would have been able to open the fridge and take out the milk bottle without human help. She also didn't think the dogs actually drank milk.

Settling for cooled orange juice instead, Peter made his way to the kitchen counter to get a glass.

For the first time, Maia noticed that he was walking with a slight limp. Maybe it was only evident because he wasn't wearing any shoes now.

She glanced down. Living in a werewolf pack, you got used to paying attention to others' weaknesses – just in case someone decided to challenge you for position in the pack at some point.

Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the thick band of scar tissue circling Peter's leg just above the ankle. Whatever had caused the injury must have damaged some internal structures: his foot drooped slightly when he walked, forcing him to lift the leg a little higher to clear the ground.

It reminded her a little of the way Storm ran.

She blinked.

Did that scar look like it was made by a wolf trap?

A thought entered her mind, so ridiculous she almost laughed at herself. No, that was insane – Impossible. She'd seen Cloud and Storm and Rose and Peter.

But she'd never seen them all four together, had she? She'd never even seen three of them together.

More still: They only appeared in very specific pairings: Rose and Storm; Peter and Cloud; Rose and Peter; Storm and Cloud.

Never in the days that the two had spent with them had she seen Peter and Storm in one room together. Or Rose and Cloud, for that matter.

"Are you done?" Peter asked her, his voice not unfriendly.

She looked up, embarrassed to have been caught staring, more embarrassed because she felt as if he had an idea of what had been going through her mind. The amused smile he gave her seemed to confirm the latter.

"With what?" she asked, the impression of being laughed at suddenly making her feel a little belligerent.

"Coming to conclusions," he elaborated. "I could kind of see them happening in your face. Smell them on you, too."

 _Smell_ it on her?

"You're a werewolf." She still couldn't quite believe it. Now that she let herself think about it, Cloud and Storm did look more like wolves than dogs, except for the impeccable grooming and the behavior. She randomly remembered that she had read somewhere that people recognized dogs not so much by any specific anatomical feature – the variety of dog breeds being far too diverse for that – but by the fact that they filled a dog-shaped space.

Cloud and Storm definitely filled dog-shaped spaces, which would go a way towards explaining how they had registered as dogs.

Peter spread his arms as if to say 'there you go'. "Born and bred," he confirmed.

She turned to look at Cloud, who was sitting next to the door, grinning at her with a bit of her tongue showing.

"Rose?" she asked.

The change was fast – much faster than any Maia had ever witnessed.

Apparently entirely oblivious to the fact that she was stark naked, Rose didn't even try to cover herself. "Rule number one," she said. "If you get injured, you change a few times. Cleans out anything that doesn't belong in your body. Clinging to one shape is stupid and gets you dead."

"Does Dr. Malan know what you are?"

It was a stupid question, and Maia realized as soon as she said it that of course she would.

"Sure. Our families have been in contact for a while," Peter said, giving her an excuse to look away from the naked woman and towards the at least marginally dressed man. "When she told our uncle that Charlie Gale was sending her some odd werewolf for training, he sent us to have a look and see for ourselves. We came down from Canada."

"Your uncle?" Maia asked.

"Our pack leader," Rose clarified.

Maia turned towards her again at the sound of her voice, keeping her eyes firmly plastered to Rose's face.

The older woman looked close to laughter. "Alright, I'll go put some clothes on. Then we'll talk."

She turned, and was Cloud again before she crossed the threshold into the corridor.

*

They had a long breakfast together. Dr. Malan walked in, shared one look with the two older werewolves, and simply declared they'd be starting work late before walking back out.

Maia listened, alternating between amazed and confused, as Rose and Peter told her about their home pack.

"You're sure you're not contagious?"

"If we bite or scratch someone, they'll bleed," Peter said patiently, and not for the first time. "That's all they do. They won't become werewolves. We're born the way we are and we only procreate with our own. You're the first we've heard of a werewolf who was born human and who can pass on the transformation."

"Why have I never heard of you?" Maia asked. "Why has no one ever mentioned you? Not even Luke – that's my alpha. He used to be a shadowhunter. He should _know_ such things."

"Shadowhunters." Out of Rose's mouth, the word sounded like a mundane might say "fairies" – or maybe rather "trolls" or "ogres". "We know them in scary stories for children or a long winter evening. Never met one. Didn't think they existed."

Maia shook her head. Here they were, so similar, and so different, their worlds barely overlapping. "They're all over the place. How can you never have met any? They'd hate the way you are living and insist you conform to a proper human lifestyle."

According to what the two had told her, their pack lived on a sheep farm in rural Ontario, outside of human settlements, spending as much time in what they called their fur forms as they did on two legs, running without clothes that would inhibit their change and embracing the wolf in their natures as much as they did the human. Rose's and Peter's generation apparently was the first one that had gone to mundane school and learned mundane professions – as they had said, because it had grown harder and harder to hide, even out there.

"The packs are living in relative isolation," Peter said. "They're never very large because only the alpha male and the alpha female get to breed. The alpha couple keeps everything well under control. They don't stand out, they don't draw attention. The people living in the villages around the packs don't know they're there, so I can see how those shadowhunters in their towns and cities wouldn't ever notice any of us."

Maia frowned. "How do they make sure only the alphas breed?" she asked. The question may have been indiscrete, but the two didn't seem to have any sense of embarrassing questions or, for that matter, any concerns about privacy. "What happens if a couple just tries things out and something … happens?"

They looked confused, and it took a few seconds before Peter laughed. "Oh. That doesn't happen. When the females come into heat, the alpha female will protect them and make sure none of the males have access."

"But do you never - just for fun?"

Peter shook his head, quite seriously. "Never."

"You haven't ever—seriously? But you're--"

"Never going to be alpha," Peter said, and he sounded like he was stating a fact that he had long made his peace with. "Even if I tried and even if I managed to make Uncle Stuart submit to me, I'd be forever fighting the other males. If I hadn't gotten into that trap back then, maybe."

"But that's barely noticeable!" Maia protested.

He shrugged. "It's enough to be a disadvantage. It'd be more sensible to find a different pack if I wanted to become alpha anyway. Genetic diversity and all. But I'd hate to leave my sister." He looked at Rose. "Twin bonds are strong with us, you see."

That wasn't hard to see. "Have you never thought about leaving together?"

They shook their heads. "In jest, a few times. But that's all it ever was, and all it ever will be. And while Uncle Stuart knows we'll come back, he keeps sending us out on interesting errands like this one, too." Rose smiled. "It's a good life."

Maia couldn't quite agree. It seemed awfully restrictive, for all the freedom they enjoyed that she could never have in the New York pack – and did she even want it? Preserving her humanity was important to her. Running around as a wolf, hunting and eating game raw, playing with dog toys… that was impossible for her to imagine.

Even the thought of just taking on wolf shape for fun to lie in the sun and let it warm her pelt felt unpleasant to her.

"How about we ask Aunt Nadine if she'd like to invite you to come stay with us for a few weeks?" Rose asked.

In their pack, the alpha female was in charge of the women of the pack, and the alpha male of the men. "Maybe it's different when you can actually see it – experience it…"

Maia wasn't sure about that. Then again, maybe she could think of it somewhat like a student exchange in a foreign country. Getting to know a different culture. Learning a different language. Peter had said they had a language of their own, though few still spoke it. He had made a study of it.

Still hesitating a bit, she nodded.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wild Howls (Cover art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398560) by [greeniron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniron/pseuds/greeniron)




End file.
